Strategies for

Increasing
Student
Engagement
Strategies for
Increasing
Student
Engagement
Copyright © 2017 by Learning Sciences International
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Title: 20 strategies for increasing student engagement / William N. Bender.
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Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-941112-79-3 (pbk.) | ISBN 978-1-941112-89-2 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Engagement (Philosophy) | Learning, Psychology of. | Students--Psychology.
| Classroom management--Psychological aspects. | Teacher-student relationships. | BISAC:
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 Acknowledgments

Learning Sciences International would like to thank the following reviewers:

David Bosso, EdD

2012 Connecticut Teacher of the Year
Berlin High School
Berlin, CT

Stephanie Day-Young
Assistant Principal
KIPP DC
Washington, DC

Victoria Truman
Seventh-Grade English Teacher
Watson B. Duncan Middle School
Palm Beach Gardens, FL

v
 Table of Contents

About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction
Student Engagement and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What Is Student Engagement?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Engagement Strategies and Teaching Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
How to Use This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Section I
Instructional Organization for Increasing
Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1 Differentiated Instruction
Four Models for Differentiation
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Modification of a Traditional Lesson Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
A Classroom Example: A Differentiated History Lesson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Guidelines for Differentiated Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Research on Differentiated Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2 The Flipped Class Strategy

Development of the Flipped Class Concept
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Four Pillars of Flipped Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

vii
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Advantages of Flipping the Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

A Classroom Example: Inside a Flipped Science Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Steps for Flipping Your Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
A Case Study: Flipping the History Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Research on Flipped Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3 Project-Based Learning
Project Scope in PBL Instruction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Structure and Components of PBL Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
PBL Project Phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Research on PBL Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

4 Makerspace and Genius Hour

Materials and Tools for Your Makerspace
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Virtual World Support for Makerspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Guidelines for Setting Up a Makerspace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Research on Makerspace and Creative Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Section II
Tech Strategies to Increase Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

5 Augmented Reality
A Classroom Example: AR Making History Come Alive
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Setting Up Your AR Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Research on AR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

6 Games, Gamification, and Simulations

Educational Games for Teaching
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
 Table of Contents ix

A Classroom Example: Gaming in Mathematics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Virtual Worlds as Complex Gaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Beginning Gaming in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Research on Games and Virtual Worlds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

7 Virtual Field Trips

New Tech Tools for Virtual Field Trips
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Case Study: Virtual Field Trips in Science Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Guidelines for Teaching With Virtual Field Trips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Guidelines for Creating Virtual Field Trips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Research on Virtual Field Trips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

8 Coding and Robotics

Coding in the Classroom
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
A Classroom Example: First Time Coding in Grade 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Robotics: The Next Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Steps for Teaching Coding/Robotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Research on Coding and Robotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

9 Individualized
Khan Academy
Computer-Driven Instruction:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Khan Academy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Steps in Implementing Khan Academy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Research on Khan Academy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

10 Storyboarding
Comic Life
for Comprehension: Comic Life . . . . 111
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
A Classroom Example: Using Comic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Steps in Using Comic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Research on Storyboarding With Comic Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
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11 Animation
Animation in the Classroom
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
A Case Study: Animation to Increase Student Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Creating an Avatar Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Research on Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Section III
Collaborative Instruction to Increase
Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

12 Blogging
Using a Classroom Blog
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
A Classroom Example: Using Blogs for Differentiated Instruction. . . . . . . . 133
Guidelines for Beginning a Blog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Research on Classroom Blogging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

13 Social Networking for Learning: Twitter

Using Twitter in the Classroom
. . . . . . . . . . . . 139
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Guidelines for Using Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Research on Social Networking in the Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

14 Wikis to Enhance Student Engagement

What Is a Wiki?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Using a Class Wiki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
A Classroom Example: Using a Wiki. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Setting Up a Class Wiki. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Research on Wikis in the Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
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15 Peer Tutoring to Enhance Student Engagement

A Case Study: Classwide Peer Tutoring in Health Class
. . . 157
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Classwide Peer Tutoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Steps in Classwide Peer Tutoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Research on Classwide Peer Tutoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

16 The Role-Play Instructional Strategy

A Classroom Example: Using Role-Play
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Steps for Implementing Role-Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Research on Role-Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Section IV
Personal Responsibility and Student
Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

17 Mindfulness to Increase Engagement

A Classroom Example: Mindfulness in High School
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Implementing Mindfulness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Research on Mindfulness Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

18 Reward and Response Cost: ClassDojo

ClassDojo to Increase Student Engagement
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
A Classroom Example: ClassDojo for Positive and Negative Behavior . . . . 186
Research on ClassDojo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
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19 AUnderstanding
Growth Mindset Strategy
the Concept of Growth Mindset
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Lessons to Foster a Growth Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
A Case Study: Teaching Growth Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Research on Growth Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

20 Goal Setting and Self-Monitoring for Increasing

Attention Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Teaching Goal Setting and Self-Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Research on Goal Setting and Progress Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Appendix
Meta-Analysis and Effect Size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Advantages of Meta-Analyses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Disadvantages of Meta-Analyses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Use of Meta-Analyses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
 About the Author

William N. Bender, PhD, is a national leader on the general

topic of instructional tactics for the classroom, with special inter-
ests in discipline, project-based learning, technology in the class-
room, differentiated instruction, and response to intervention.
He has written twenty-five books in education, many of which
are leading sellers in their respective topics.
He currently presents numerous workshops each year for
educators around the country and in Canada, using humor and his down-to-earth
personal style. His focus is always on practical strategies and tactics that will work
in real classrooms, and his work is firmly based on his experience teaching public
school special needs students in eighth and ninth grades. After earning his PhD from
the University of North Carolina, he spent a career teaching educators at Rutgers
University and the University of Georgia.

xiii
 Introduction

Student Engagement
and Learning

T eachers have long realized that student engagement is absolutely essential for
student learning; if students are not engaged with the content to be mastered,
they will not learn it. I wrestled with this reality during my teaching days, working
with eighth- and ninth-grade students with mild to moderate disabilities. I saw stu-
dents with learning disabilities or emotional problems struggling to pay attention
for more than two or three minutes to their assignments. A few years later, my
dissertation focused on the attention skills of students with learning disabilities in
high school (Bender, 1985), so student engagement is one issue on which I have a
long-standing interest. In many ways, this book stems from that work.
However, this book is not just a theory on attention or student engagement. In
this book, I’ll not present brain structures that facilitate arousal or attention, nor will
the attention–memory connection be discussed herein. Rather, this book is focused
on specific strategies for engaging students in the classroom, based on the simple
fact that as student engagement with the educational content increases, academic
achievement also increases.

What Is Student Engagement?

Definitions of student engagement vary somewhat and have changed over the years,
as have the methods for measuring student engagement. For example, engagement
or attention used to be measured in terms of eye contact. That is, if a student’s eyes
were directed toward the academic content in the book or on the board, the student

1
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was believed to be paying attention and engaged with the learning content (Bender,
1985). However, this eye contact definition of engagement was never satisfactory
because, with a moment’s thought, all teachers will quickly realize that students can
easily stare at a book without being engaged with the content.
More recent thought on student engagement has identified particulars, and even
included emotional reactions, in the definition of engagement. For example, engage-
ment is frequently defined today as students’ cognitive investment in, active par-
ticipation with, and emotional commitment to learning particular content (Zepke
& Leach, 2010). A limited body of research investigates student engagement by
measuring actual brain activity during various tasks, but this type of research is rare.

Engagement may be defined as students’ cognitive investment in, active

participation with, and emotional commitment to learning particular content.

In my workshops with teachers around the country, I often use an example from
an old movie called Teachers. That movie presented a teacher in the late 1970s who
“taught” exclusively using worksheets. The students and other teachers all called this
worksheet-crazed teacher “Ditto,” a name derived from the ditto machines that were
used at that time to make copies of worksheets. Students came into Ditto’s class, took
the ditto worksheet copies off one side of his desk, passed them out, and worked on
them all period. Meanwhile, Ditto himself sat at his desk and read the newspaper,
never making eye contact with a student or talking to anyone! At the end of each
class when the bell rang, the students collected all the completed worksheets and put
them on the other side of Ditto’s desk prior to leaving the classroom.
As presented in the movie, Ditto died one day in third period, still holding his
newspaper, seated behind his desk. No one noticed!
His fourth-period class came into the room, collected their ditto worksheets, com-
pleted them, put them on the other side of the desk, and left, as did the fifth- and
sixth-period classes. Ditto merely sat there, dead, behind his newspaper. The janitor
found Ditto, cold as a stone, later that night, still seated behind the desk holding up
the newspaper. In the context of this book, Ditto, this fictional teacher, can provide
a useful lesson:

If a dead guy can do it, it ain’t teaching!

There is at least one important corollary to that guideline that is somewhat more
relevant for this book:

If a dead guy can do it, it ain’t learning!

 Student Engagement and Learning 3

Learning must be active. For students to be engaged with their learning, they must
be invested, they must be involved. As both the definition and this movie example
illustrate, student engagement is more than merely a passive response to a lecture or
even a halfhearted attempt to pay slight attention and complete a worksheet. Rather,
student learning—student engagement—is an active, involved, cognitive, and emo-
tional investment in the content to be learned. While teachers have long understood
that cognitive involvement was necessary for learning to take place, the more recent
insight herein is that students must be emotionally invested in their learning activity.
Teachers who plan their lessons with that in mind might find that they begin to plan
different types of lesson activities.
In fact, using this concept of student engagement provides teachers with a goal for
lesson development, a general direction for planning lesson activities. For student
engagement to be maximized, it becomes the teacher’s task to delineate learning
activities that will foster cognitive involvement in and emotional connection with
the learning content. To the degree that we educators can provide such activities,
students are much more likely to be engaged and also more likely to learn.
There is one additional caveat to this discussion of student engagement. As shown
previously, engagement is very hard to measure in an academic setting. Further, stu-
dent engagement is not a targeted or direct goal of education. Rather, engagement
is most frequently discussed as a precursor and essential cause for increased stu-
dent achievement. For that reason, there is not a great deal of research proving that
any given instructional strategy increases student engagement. Rather, most efficacy
research involves documenting how a strategy impacts students’ achievement, rather
than student engagement itself. Therefore, in each following strategy, the research
discussed will emphasize improving academic achievement.

Engagement Strategies and Teaching Tips

At the outset, I should describe the distinction between a strategy to enhance stu-
dent engagement and a simple teaching tip. A teaching tip involves a simple, easily
implemented practice or teaching habit that will typically enhance the instruction for
all teachers. For example, Ripp (2015) recommends a number of teaching tips that
teachers might employ to keep students engaged. These include things like:
• Change it up—varying instructional practices from time to time
• Find a new way—seeking ways for students to present their knowledge
• Get up and move—using movement in class to keep students from
getting bored
4 2 0 S T R AT E G I E S F O R I N C R E A S I N G S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T

• Stop the train wreck—stopping and discussing educational activities on

which students lose interest and then discussing why they lost interest
while seeking another way to do the same thing
All of these teaching tips are effective ways to increase student engagement, but
they are merely teaching tips, suggestions on how to teach. These are not highly
involved strategies to implement in the classroom. A quick look at the literature on
student engagement reveals many articles that provide teaching tips or suggestions of
this nature (Cochrane Collegiate Academy, 2014; Marzano, 2015; McCarthy, 2015;
Ripp, 2015; Tizzard, 2010; Zepke & Leach, 2010), and many of these suggestions
have merit. A list of tips from these sources, along with a very brief explanation of
each, is presented in Box 1.

Box 1: Teaching Tips to Enhance Student Engagement

Hold a meaningful conversation: When students are not engaged, stop the
lesson and ask why. Talk about what might interest them more, and let them
know you are willing to try activities they suggest.
Turn on some music: Sometimes playing soft background music can help
motivate them. However, take care to note the impact of background music
on every student; for some students, any noise merely creates a distraction.
Make learning content personal: Personalizing the learning by showing how
content is meaningful and relevant to students will help them remain focused
on the content.
Use technology: Students today use technology in almost every aspect of
their lives, and integrating this into learning will help hold the attention of
many students.
Give students some choices: By making different choices among lesson
assignments available to students, we are sharing control of the class with
them. Students will often focus on the content more when they have chosen
one of several activity options.
Create collaborative learning that fosters relationships: Students will often
engage more in collaborative working situations than in individual situations.
Create challenging activities: Students will often engage more when working
on activities that challenge their knowledge, particularly in team or learning-
pair types of activities.
Use movement to make learning active: High-energy activities always seem
to increase retention compared to more passive types of learning activities, so
teachers should create learning environments that build energy.
Make it a game: Games and competitive activities foster higher student
engagement more readily than simple practice-the-learning activities.
 Student Engagement and Learning 5

Focus on clearly stated goals: Teachers should identify specific essential

questions or lesson objectives and stress the importance of them for
the students.
Use an activating task: A brief high-interest activity at the beginning of a
lesson will help students focus actively on the content. Competitive activities
or interesting brief video clips can add interest to the content.
Limit the lecture: Teachers have long recognized that lectures make students
passive learners, and as a rule, the only lectures used in classrooms today
should be brief highly focused mini-lessons (eight to fifteen minutes, as
suggested by research on brain functioning; Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011).
Use graphics and illustrations: Graphic organizers or simple student
drawings that highlight aspects of the content can greatly aid in remembering
that content. Having the students create these graphics and illustrations using
either simple drawings or digital creative tools will enhance learning.
Focus on higher-order thinking: Questions that focus on the bigger picture
or the more complete task will often engage students more than simple
factual or memory questions.
Summarize the work at the end: Summarization is a great closure activity for
the end of a lesson, and having students discuss the summary in partners for
the last five minutes of class will increase memory for the content.

Teachers should certainly employ some or most of these teaching tips, but again,
these are not specific instructional strategies designed to increase student engage-
ment. In contrast to the brief teaching tips, a strategy in this context is a more
involved instructional procedure that will be more likely to foster student engage-
ment. Strategies will take some time for teachers to plan and implement and may
involve in-depth modification of long-standing instructional practices. Strategies to
increase student engagement may involve how instruction is organized or how teach-
ers facilitate students’ taking personal responsibility for learning. Alternatively, some
strategies involve learning about and employing new teaching tools, many of which
involve modern teaching technologies, in the classroom.
Teachers who have chosen to purchase this book typically have explored and imple-
mented many of the teaching tips that one can find in the literature or in Box 1.
However, many teachers, having implemented those teaching tips and habits, are
still seeking substantive ideas to increase engagement. These teachers need practical,
proven strategies that engage the students we find in the classroom today, the tech-
savvy students who know and utilize all of the most modern phone apps and in their
spare time focus on highly engaging computer games with sophisticated graphics,
games that are highly interactive and demand near-instantaneous responses. These
students routinely engage with their friends in various social networks.
6 2 0 S T R AT E G I E S F O R I N C R E A S I N G S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T

Today’s students are not likely to be highly engaged in a traditional “lecture, dis-
cuss, test” type of instructional format. These students demand and expect intensive,
attention-grabbing instructional practices. This book is intended to fulfill that need.

How to Use This Book

Specifically, this book is intended for teachers across the grade levels who are seeking
ways to meaningfully engage students with the curricular content. Herein, I present
a variety of instructional strategies that are known to foster high levels of student
engagement. These are presented in four broad areas—instructional organization
strategies, technology strategies, collaborative strategies, and personal responsibility
strategies—with multiple strategies shared for each broad area.
In various strategy sections, I have included classroom examples and case studies,
which include examples in various subjects across the grade levels. In order to ensure
the practicality of this work, I have also invited several educators to write teacher
contributions in which they note how they use specific strategies to enhance student
engagement in their classes. In various sections, I’ve included some specific related
information in boxed form that should generally be considered as sidebar informa-
tion. I’ve also included various figures and data charts throughout the text to show
how teachers might evaluate the efficacy of the strategies described.
This book also provides many specific instructional guidelines or step-by-step
instructions for various strategies. Each of these text features is clearly identified in
the book and should help the reader in understanding the strategies.
This book is structured such that teachers should feel free to skip around. While
research evidence is cited throughout the book, the primary purpose here is to pro-
vide teachers with practical, effective, and time-efficient instructional strategies, and
given that teachers’ time is always at a premium, teachers should feel free to select
individual strategies that they wish to consider for their own classroom and read
those sections of the book first.
Teachers should realize that, for most of these strategies, there are a variety of ways
they may be implemented, and guidelines for implementation presented are exactly
that—guidelines. I realize that the primary audience for this book is veteran teachers
just like you! You are probably already an effective teacher who is exploring ways to
become more effective. Thus, you should feel free to adapt these ideas, to merge these
strategies, or to modify them in any reasonable or ethical manner that works in your
classroom. Talk with your colleagues and reflect on these teaching strategies in order
to make them your own.
 Student Engagement and Learning 7

With that noted, I would also make one additional request: drop me a line or two
via email (my direct email is [email protected]) and let me know how any
of these strategies worked for you. Let me know of your modifications, adaptations
of these ideas, and how and why they worked, if they did, in your classroom. Please
understand that this is more than merely a polite invitation. I truly enjoy interacting
via email with teachers who have used my work to further their own, and I seriously
invite you to contact me about the topics included herein. I sincerely hope that this
work is useful for you, and as a classroom teacher myself, I understand your time
constraints, as well as the job you are doing. Further, I recognize the importance
of that job.
Finally, with that in mind, let me join the many parents and students who, I’m
sure, have told you in the past: Thanks for what you do! You are making a difference!
 SECTION I

Instructional
Organization for
Increasing Engagement

9
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Student engagement, as defined previously, involves many facets, but one of the most
important involves structuring the curriculum and delivery of instruction specifically
to maximize engagement. When the traditional “lecture, discuss, test” instructional
approach is considered, an effort to increase engagement will be, in essence, an effort
to decrease lectures and whole-class discussion. This does not mean that these tradi-
tional teaching approaches have no place in the modern classroom; it does mean that
these instructional activities should be fairly rare, since it has long been recognized
that lecture is one of the least effective ways to teach, forcing students into a passive
role. Student engagement is often quite low during lecture types of classes. This sec-
tion focuses on several ways to organize instruction to minimize those traditional
forms of teaching.
Differentiated instruction is one instructional approach that fosters varied instruc-
tional activities. This concept is now nearly two decades old, and we educators should
give credit where credit is due. The concept of differentiated instruction developed
by Carol Tomlinson (1999) represents one of the first, and certainly one of the most
effective, efforts to vary how instruction was delivered in order to address individual
learning styles and the needs of specific students and to increase their engagement
with the subject content. As such, a discussion of differentiated instruction is war-
ranted here.
In addition, several more recent instructional organization approaches have like-
wise been developed in recent years, including project-based learning, the flipped
classroom, and genius hour / makerspace. The impact of each of these instructional
organization strategies on student engagement is presented in this section.
 Strategy 1

Differentiated Instruction

D ifferentiated instruction is an excellent instructional strategy for keeping stu-

dents engaged in an intensive, meaningful way with the learning content.
Differentiation involves varying the instructional activities in the class by selecting
specific types of activities for each individual student, based on his or her indi-
vidual learning characteristics and learning style preferences (Bender, 2013a; Sousa
& Tomlinson, 2011; Tomlinson, 2003, 2010). Tomlinson originally developed this
teaching strategy in 1999, and since then, much work has been done to further
this concept, with Tomlinson herself leading this effort (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011;
Tomlinson, 2003, 2010).

Differentiated instruction involves varying the instructional activities in the

class by selecting specific types of activities for each student, based on his or
her individual learning characteristics and learning style preferences.

Over the last decade, the differentiated instruction approach has moved away from
a dependence on only one learning style theory to embrace a variety of student dif-
ferences and appropriate curricular modifications (Bender, 2013a, 2013b; King &
Gurian, 2006; Lee, Wehmeyer, Sookup, & Palmer, 2010). Further, the concept has
been applied in a variety of subjects and a variety of ways across the grade levels
(Bender, 2013a; King & Gurian, 2006). Because student learning differences are more
directly addressed in differentiated classes, students are more likely to be engaged with
the learning content, and limited research evidence does show increased academic
achievement resulting from increased differentiation (King & Gurian, 2006; Lee et
al., 2010; Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011; Tomlinson, Brimijoin, & Navaez, 2008).

11
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Four Models for Differentiation

At least four different models for differentiation have been developed and promoted
(Bender, 2013a, 2013b; Tomlinson, 2010; Tomlinson, Brimijoin, & Narvaez, 2008),
including: modification of a traditional lesson plan, learning centers, project-based
learning, and the flipped classroom. All of these teaching approaches are, in essence,
various ways to differentiate instruction, because each of these approaches fosters use
of a wide variety of lesson activities and also allows students to use their preferred
learning style to maximum effect (Bender, 2013a).
Because the differentiated instruction concept has been around since Tomlinson’s
initial work in 1999, many teachers have already explored various approaches to dif-
ferentiating instruction. Still, because differentiation does increase student engage-
ment and provides a very viable alternative to more traditional approaches, such as
lectures in content classes, it must be presented here. This section focuses primarily
on the original approach to differentiated instruction, modification of the traditional
whole-group lesson plan.

Modification of a Traditional Lesson Plan

The traditional lesson plan format was developed in the late 1960s and is typically
described as phases of instruction within a single-day whole-class lesson. The five
phases of instruction are presented in Box 1.1. Of course, variations of the phases in
that traditional lesson plan vary from one author to another, but in most cases, that
plan looks something like this.

Box 1.1: Phases in a Traditional Whole-Class Lesson Plan

Orientation to the topic: Teacher gives a three- to five-minute orientation
using an essential question, objective, or real-world example.
Teacher-led instruction: Teacher presents additional examples and shows
the content as the students’ first exposure to the topic.
Teacher-led practice: Students practice a few problems, under teacher
supervision.
Independent practice: Students practice problems independently, often as
homework and sometimes as small-group work.
Check and reteach: Teacher checks student understanding on a few
problems and reteaches the content as necessary.
 Differentiated Instruction 13

In this lesson plan, students’ attention often wanes either because the content is
too difficult and they cannot keep up or they are advanced and get bored listening to
initial instructional examples that they do not need. Thus, traditional lessons typi-
cally lose students at both ends of the ability spectrum—gifted students and students
with learning challenges. Still, in traditional classes, the whole class proceeds through
all of these steps simultaneously, and if small-group instruction is provided, it comes
following the initial instruction led by the teacher.
In order to increase student engagement with learning content and to optimize
achievement, Tomlinson recommended varying the instructional activities for dif-
ferent class members, based on their individual learning styles. While her first book
(Tomlinson, 1999) was based largely on Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences
theory, most of her later books have moved beyond that one theory to focus on
many learning style preferences and achievement differences (Tomlinson, 2003,
2010; Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011).
After teachers became familiar with Tomlinson’s work, many began to modify the
traditional whole-group lesson plan to allow for more differentiated activities. The
differentiated classrooms of today present a much wider array of activities, targeted
at individual learners, in order to address the issues of more varied learning styles,
learning preferences, and the wider academic diversity in today’s schools.

A Classroom Example: A Differentiated

History Lesson
Imagine a traditional history lesson in Ms. Kimball’s fifth-grade class, a class of twenty-
four students, five of whom are students with special needs. Several of those five
students have learning disabilities or ADHD, and five students, including one stu-
dent with ADHD, are academically advanced. In other words, Ms. Kimball’s class
is a typical fifth-grade class. Ms. Kimball is teaching a history lesson in a one-week
history unit concerning Manifest Destiny and the Texas Revolution. Box 1.2 (page
14) shows the phases of a traditional whole-group lesson plan on the left and a series
of differentiated lesson activities on the right for the same lesson.
14 2 0 S T R AT E G I E S F O R I N C R E A S I N G S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T

Box 1.2: Traditional and Differentiated Lesson Plan

Traditional Lesson Differentiated Lesson
Orientation
Ms. Kimball introduces the Alamo. Same activity for all students.
Teacher-Led Instruction
Ms. Kimball begins discussion of what Ms. Kimball assigns a group to write
caused the Texas Revolution with a role-play on causes to fight. The
eighteen students in the mainline Omega group is formed to begin
group who receive increased teacher that work.
attention.
Teacher-Led Practice
Ms. Kimball gives student groups Omega group continues its work,
an assignment to look up how while Ms. Kimball forms a second
their chosen character perceived group—the Beta group—for another
the fight. Ms. Kimball is now differentiated assignment, perhaps
working with eleven students in the seeking online information on
mainline group. the Runaway Scrape in the Texas
Revolution.
Independent Practice and Check Reteach Phases
Whole group comes back together for further activities.

To begin this lesson with an attention-grabbing orientation activity, Ms. Kimball

shows a three- to ten-minute segment of the movie The Alamo and asks students
to identify their favorite historic figure from among five figures. That movie pres-
ents many historic figures (Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Colonel William Travis, Juan
Seguin, General Santa Anna). She then asks them to list three reasons for their
choice. She announces that there will be a popularity vote on who is the best-loved
historic character at the end of the week-long unit but that each student has to know
the history of the whole Texas Revolution. After that brief introduction activity for
the whole class, the students are interested in learning more about their choices.
At that point, Ms. Kimball has captured the interest of the students and set up
a competition among them for that week. In a traditional whole-class lesson, she
would proceed to the next phase—teacher-led instruction—by saying, “Let’s look at
why these men fought in the revolution,” and in many cases, that is exactly where
many students lose interest in the lesson. Students with disabilities or limited atten-
tion simply wander away mentally, and while interesting orientation activities can
hold students’ interest for a brief time, moving into teacher-led instruction is often
where they mentally check out. Further, some of the more advanced students may
 Differentiated Instruction 15

have already understood the idea and may be looking in the text for information on
their chosen historic figure. Thus, like their less successful classmates, they too have
mentally checked out. In this example, both advanced students and students with
learning problems have become unengaged with the lesson content during the whole-
group lesson format. Further, when five students with disabilities and five advanced
or gifted students cease to pay attention, Ms. Kimball has effectively lost ten of her
twenty-four students. In this example of a traditional lesson plan, ten students have
stopped participating in the lesson simply because Ms. Kimball taught the traditional
whole-group lesson plan, just as recommended in the teacher’s manual!

Forming Differentiated Groups

The differentiated lesson plan on the right side of Box 1.2 provides a set of mod-
ified lesson activities that are much more likely to keep all or most of these learners
actively engaged with the lesson. Rather than begin the second phase of the tradi-
tional whole-group lesson, Ms. Kimball selects a group for a different activity while
she continues the traditional lesson with the other students. To do this, Ms. Kimball
identifies several students at the end of the orientation activity who can work inde-
pendently and several who can’t in order to have a heterogeneous ability group. She
selects students who work well together and have a similar learning style—perhaps
learning through collaborative role-play and movement. She then forms a differen-
tiated instructional group for a different learning activity on these characters that is
directly tied to their learning style preference.
For example, she assigns an activity of planning a one-act role-play in which three
or four of the historic figures debate their perspective on the Texas Revolution. There
is considerable debate on what the defenders of the Alamo were fighting for. They
may not have known that Texas independence had been declared by other Texans at
the time of the battle, and most, like the Mexican Juan Seguin, who fought with the
Alamo defenders, were probably fighting for the restoration of the Mexican constitu-
tion, which Santa Anna had defied. Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett were both rough
and tumble Americans and were probably fighting for total independence, while the
Alamo commander, Colonel Travis, may have been fighting for the restoration of the
Mexican constitution. Clearly Santa Anna perceived all the defenders as “pirates” or
revolutionaries with no legal basis for their claims.
Thus, these students are assigned to present a role-play of these historic figures
meeting in a frontier tavern and discussing their perspectives before the fight. The
students work relatively independently, while Ms. Kimball works with others in the
class in a traditional lesson plan format, as shown in Box 1.2. We’ll call that differ-
entiated group the Omega group.
16 2 0 S T R AT E G I E S F O R I N C R E A S I N G S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T

Ms. Kimball knows that as long as some students in the Omega group get the
overall concept of what is needed, the group should be able to work on its own in
this differentiated learning activity, while Ms. Kimball continues the traditional les-
son format with others in the classroom. Note that while small-group instruction in
traditional lessons is typically used much later in a traditional lesson plan, after the
teacher has taught the content, in a differentiated lesson plan students are doing dif-
ferent activities within five or ten minutes of the beginning of the class, even before
the teacher-led instructional phase of the lesson. Thus, fewer students get mentally
lost during instruction, and fewer get bored than in a traditional lesson.
The names used for differentiated groups in the class should be nonsequential and
should not indicate a quantitative or qualitative judgment on the skills or the intellect
of the group. However, as teachers differentiate more, the class will grow to under-
stand that different groups are frequently formed to complete alternative learning
activities and that not all students in the class do the same activities.
In this example, Ms. Kimball has previously developed an assignment sheet for the
Omega group presenting a scenario for a secret meeting in a neutral place, a guarded
frontier tavern, where participants gather to discuss their positions and hopefully
prevent the coming battle. The Omega group students are instructed to explore the
perspectives of these historic figures using the text and Internet sources and then
begin to write dialogue formulating these positions. The final step is ordering and
structuring the dialogue such that each participant speaks in response to the others.
Thus, rather than merely listening to Ms. Kimball discuss the Texas Revolution, these
students are engaged at a deeper, more creative level. As the Omega group students
work, they become one with their characters, which is why role-play can be so effec-
tive in history classes.
Of course, Ms. Kimball and other teachers rarely have to create these alternative
differentiated activities. Most modern curricula include instructional alternatives in
the teacher’s manual, so Ms. Kimball need only preselect an appropriate activity and
provide any necessary materials to the Omega group.

The Mainline Instructional Group

In this example, Ms. Kimball has provided an orientation and then differenti-
ated the lesson activities based on individual learners’ characteristics by forming
two groups: the Omega group and the mainline group. As the Omega group does
its work, Ms. Kimball engages in the next phase of the lesson, teacher-led initial
instruction, for the mainline group. She makes certain that the activity provided for
that group is at least as engaging as the work the Omega group is doing. However, we
should note that, with fewer students working directly with Ms. Kimball, the efficacy
 Differentiated Instruction 17

of her teaching is likely to go up. In a smaller mainline group, she can make better
eye contact with the students and give each student more attention than in a whole-
class lesson. This tends to increase the engagement of both groups, which is why
differentiated instruction is very effective; more students are more highly engaged
with the history content. Also, in order to focus the attention of the mainline group,
Ms. Kimball considers reorienting the class. For example, if the Omega group is
working in the right front of the classroom in a small-group workspace, she has the
mainline group turn their desks to face the left rear corner of the room. In that way,
Ms. Kimball can increase student engagement in two critical ways:
1. She has oriented the mainline instructional group to have their backs to
the Omega group, and both groups are more likely to pay attention to
their own assigned task.
2. She has placed herself in a position to lead instruction for the mainline
group and still visually monitor the Omega group with ease.

The Beta Group

At the end of the teacher-led instructional phase, several things happen at once.
First, if the students in the Omega group happen to finish their assignment, they
are told to rejoin the mainline group. Otherwise, they simply continue their group
work. Next, prior to beginning the next phase of the traditional lesson, the teacher-
led practice phase, Ms. Kimball selects another group for a second differentiated
activity. We’ll refer to it as the Beta group. Again, Ms. Kimball takes care to include
both students who have grasped the content and a few who haven’t. The Beta group
is then given some type of assignment on the history lesson. As shown in Box 1.2,
this involves seeking information on the Runaway Scrape, which was the second part
of the Texas Revolution. Note that when the two differentiated groups are doing
separate, small-group assignments, Ms. Kimball is instructing a group of only ten or
twelve students in the mainline group, resulting in even more direct teacher attention
for every learner and increased student engagement.
In this classroom example, Ms. Kimball is providing highly fluid differentiated
instruction, targeted at individual students based on their learning styles and individ-
ual needs. In a differentiated class, small groups are frequently formed from the very
beginning of the lesson and then rejoin the mainline instruction, as appropriate. Not
all groups do all the activities, but all receive small-group work tied to their learning
preferences and direct teacher attention in a smaller mainline instruction group.
Meanwhile, during almost all of the class, Ms. Kimball is working with smaller num-
bers of students and instructional efficacy is very likely to increase.
18 2 0 S T R AT E G I E S F O R I N C R E A S I N G S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T

As this example indicates, rather than lecturing to the whole class, differentiated
lessons offer an option to all teachers for replacing lecture with brief, intensive small-
group and teacher-led instruction. In the differentiated class, students tend to be much
more engaged with the learning content, and therefore, learning is likely to increase.

Guidelines for Differentiated Instruction

Know Your Students
The concept of differentiated instruction has always focused on knowing the learn-
ing styles and abilities of each student in the class. Some students learn best through
movement-based instruction; others learn verbally or from reading texts or from
computer-based study. Some students learn best in small-group discussions. Knowing
the individual learning characteristics of every student, along with that student’s
overall achievement level, will allow teachers to form effective small groups virtually
instantly, and matching the instructional activity to individual learning characteristics
is the very essence of differentiated instruction.

Take Time to Plan Differentiated Lessons

When teachers first consider differentiated lessons, they are often very concerned
with the time it takes to plan multiple activities. Clearly, relying on the traditional
lecture-based lesson plan is easier than planning a dynamic, differentiated lesson.
However, teachers must understand that the main emphasis of differentiated instruc-
tion is the presentation of lesson activities that actively engage the learners in new
and dramatic ways. At least initially, such lesson planning will take a bit more time.
We should also note that effective differentiated instruction takes place well before
the class begins. Differentiation is based on well-planned, highly focused, small-
group lessons for learners with similar learning styles and needs. Teachers will need
to select these activities in advance of the lesson and prepare for them. In the previous
example, Ms. Kimball might have continued to differentiate the lesson throughout
the period by forming additional groups as necessary. In most cases, however, dif-
ferentiated lessons rarely involve more than three small groups in the class, because
as students finish a differentiated assignment, they frequently rejoin the teacher-led
instruction for a brief time.

Prepare Students for Differentiated Group Work

Increased collaborative work and small-group work are emphasized in most state
curricular standards, so teachers are seeking ways to increase these learning activities.
Differentiated lessons provide an excellent vehicle for doing exactly that. However,
 Differentiated Instruction 19

effective small-group work doesn’t just happen! To prepare students for these small
groups, all teachers moving into more differentiation should also plan to teach small-
group learning skills such as brainstorming, active listening, timelining, and provid-
ing constructive criticism. Of course, these skills are also critical in the modern world
and directly transfer to later life experiences.

Invite Students to Plan and Prepare Differentiated Activities

As shown in Box 1.2, it is possible on many occasions to have one small group
prepare an educational activity for the class. In this example, the role-play should be
performed for the whole class, followed by a discussion of the differing perspectives
of these historic figures. With a strong focus on the specific historical content, stu-
dents can often prepare an activity for others to subsequently use.

Trust Students to Learn From Each Other

Differentiated instruction is working in classrooms because students can and do
learn from each other, and teachers must learn to trust that. Some students might
even learn more effectively from each other than from a teacher, because some stu-
dents pay more attention to their peers than to the teacher. If the small groups are
selected carefully by the teacher, students will learn from others in the class.

Replace Lectures With Differentiated Lessons

Educators have long realized that lecture is the least effective way to teach, and for
that reason, many teachers have already moved to differentiated lessons rather than
exclusive use of traditional, whole-group lecture-based lesson plans. However, not
every whole-group lesson needs to be highly differentiated. There are many whole-
group activities that can and do actively engage almost all learners. These include
gaming activities, project-based work, video/computer-based presentations, debates
and role-play, interactive simulations, and other whole-class activities. When a
teacher is using these types of high-engagement activities, little differentiation will be
necessary to keep all students focused on the learning content, and many of these are
discussed later in this book. As an initial goal for teachers moving into differentiated
instruction, I suggest that teachers use those types of whole-group activities for one
or two periods weekly and implement a highly differentiated lesson on other days.

Research on Differentiated Instruction

The research support base for differentiated instruction is neither particularly strong
nor extensive, and this lack of a strong, broad research base may stem, in part, from
the assumption that differentiated instruction is a broad instructional approach
20 2 0 S T R AT E G I E S F O R I N C R E A S I N G S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T

rather than a specific teaching strategy. Nevertheless, teachers have responded quite
strongly to the differentiated instruction concept, and many teachers report improved
student satisfaction and increased academic performance resulting from increased
differentiation (King & Gurian, 2006; Lee et al., 2010; Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011).
In fact, educators generally seem to believe that differentiated instruction represents
an expectation for all teachers in the future. Marzano, as one example, includes
differentiated instruction in his book on excellence in teaching (Tomlinson, 2010).
Further, case-study research does suggest increased academic performance when
differentiated instruction is widely employed at the school level (Bender, 2013a;
King & Gurian, 2006; Tomlinson, 2010; Tomlinson, Brimijoin, & Navaez, 2008).
Tomlinson, Brimijoin, and Navaez (2008), for example, describe the implementa-
tion of differentiated instruction at two schools, an elementary school and a high
school. These researchers documented rates of proficiency in core subjects of read-
ing, writing, and mathematics prior to and after implementation of differentiated
instruction. The faculty was provided an implementation period of one year, which
included significant professional development focused on the differentiated instruc-
tion concept. Those proficiency-score pre/post comparisons showed that after differ-
entiated instruction was implemented schoolwide, students’ proficiency jumped up
in each subject, between 10 percent and 30 percent. That is a very significant jump
in achievement scores schoolwide!

Summary
Teachers who are not already providing differentiated instruction should certainly
begin to do so, because this instructional strategy will increase student engagement
rather drastically. Further, while research results here are limited, this teaching strat-
egy does represent the future of instruction simply because of the increased academic
and learning style variance in the typical classroom today. At the very least, replac-
ing most lectures with differentiated instruction assignments will increase academic
engagement and performance. Also, this emphasis on differentiated instruction will
provide an opportunity for both students and teachers to enjoy learning in new and
novel ways.
Personally, I’ve become committed to this differentiated instruction strategy.
This strategy represents a drastic improvement over the “teacher in front lecturing”
approach, coupled with little to no classroom activity and resulting in very bored
students. For that reason, I like to see highly fluid, differentiated groups in every
classroom in the school.